Eggcorn Forum

Announcement

Registrations were closed for a long time because of forum spam, but I have re-opened them on a trial basis.

The forum administrator (chris dot waigl at gmail dot com) reserves the right to request users to plausibly demonstrate that they are real people with an interest in the topic of eggcorns. Otherwise they may be removed with no further justification. Likewise, accounts that have not been used for posting may be removed.

Re: SUEY sauce (soy)

I think Joe must be thinking of “suey” sauce as using an element from “chop suey.” And there are other citations for “suey sauce” that appear to be referring to soy sauce, but in some cases it’s hard to tell what the writer meant because people really do seem to talk about a sauce that will provide a basis for chop suey, and such sauces almost always include soy sauce.

Re: SUEY sauce (soy)

Chop suey itself appears to be an eggcorn. Wikipedia says that chop suey comes from Chinese 杂碎, which is romanized as zá suì; literally “assorted pieces”, or “mixed broken”. So the ‘suey’ part means chopped, and the ‘chop’ part means tossed.

We document eggcorns hatched by Chinese speakers; I don’t suppose we’ll get too far in exposing English miss translations. Soy and suey is a great start that might be pushed a bit further with, for example, char siu. This refers to a manner of roasting pork, literally as “fork roasted/burnt” from the way it is hung in the roasting oven. What a coincidence then, that char should mean much the same in English and Cantonese! At least it would be uncanny were it not that char means “fork”, and siu, “roasted/charred”.

Home cooking Char sui (Chinese barbecue sauce)
The marinade for the pork is called char sui sauce. You can buy char sui sauce in jars or you can make your own. My char sui turned out great but I should have grilled the meat over lower heat. To make sure that the pork gets cooked through without too much charring on the surface, keep the heat down.

Re: SUEY sauce (soy)

Alas, referring to “soy sauce” as “suey sauce” just might be a personal eggcorn. I get zero Google hits for “pass the suey sauce”, “shake the suey sauce”, and “bottle of suey sauce.” And here’s the other thing … I suspect I always knew the stuff as “soy sauce” and considered “suey sauce” as an alternative way of referring to it, but it wasn’t linguistically understood to be simply “sauce to be used on chop suey” since I wouldn’t have referred to any other sauce that way; only the soy sauce.